Moyane stopped Treasury from blacklisting Bosasa – report

According to testimony on Monday from the controversial company’s former COO, Angelo Agrizzi, at the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture, when former Sars boss Tom Moyane took on the role of director-general at the department of correctional services, the bribes paid by Bosasa to officials at the department increased from R500,000 a month to R750,000.

A report in the Mail & Guardian on Friday indicates one of the ways Moyane may have given Bosasa value for that money – by thwarting attempts by Treasury to blacklist the company from doing business with the government.

The publication reports that, from 2013, Treasury attempted to get Moyane to blacklist the company after the state’s forensic investigation and litigation agency, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), released a report that implicated Bosasa in corruption.

READ MORE: Bosasa bribe upped to R750k when Tom Moyane appointed commissioner – Agrizzi

Treasury’s chief procurement officer at the time, Kenneth Brown, tried to implement restrictions that would have curtailed Bosasa’s monopoly on government contracts after the department of justice advised him that suppliers who had been found to have gained tenders through collusion with members of government were still benefiting.

This led to a meeting with Moyane in which Brown called for blacklisting.

“The OCPO [office of the chief procurement officer] did not succeed in getting the commissioner to restrict Bosasa,” said a representative for Treasury in the report.

While Agrizzi confirmed there had been an increase in the amount of bribe money the department of correctional services received after Moyane took over, he added that he did not know which officials received the money, and was not certain whether Moyane did.

The bribes went through a politically connected middleman, Sesinyi Seopela, who instructed him about the increase.

“It was told to me by Seopela, so I had to increase the amount that was packed,” Agrizzi told Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.

Moyane went on to become the commissioner of Sars, where his disastrous tenure is believed to have resulted in a  “massive failure of integrity and governance” that saw the once solid institution fall into disarray and dysfunction.

A report by the Nugent commission set up to investigate misconduct at the revenue service found in September that President Cyril Ramaphosa should fire Moyane “immediately“. The president did so after “applying his mind” to the report’s findings.

READ MORE: If you want to fix Sars, Cyril, ‘fire Tom Moyane right now’

Moyane’s attempts to get his job at Sars back stopped in December last year after Judge Hans Fabricius ruled that Moyane’s application for an interim interdict, restoring him to his position and allowing him to remain on suspension with his full salary and benefits pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing, was not urgent. He said Moyane had not proved he would suffer irreparable harm if the order was not granted.

Fabricius delivered a scathing judgment in which he severely criticised Moyane for attacking, insulting, and defaming the office of the president and Judge Nugent without reasonable cause and hurling insults at every conceivable opportunity.

Moyane, who reportedly now runs a florist, has been at the centre of two separate criminal investigations by the Hawks.

(Compiled by Daniel Friedman. Additional reporting by Ilse de Lange)

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